Re: Great Depression In U.S. Defined Lives


In her Rosslyn home, a yellowed clipping from that April day in 1931
with President Herbert Hoover and his wife has been carefully
preserved. She can still recount the meal: "split-pea soup, meatloaf,
baked potatoes, tomato salad, bread pudding and tea, for just under 25
cents a person."


That's a strange story, Don. Hoover invented the bunker mentality fifteen years before Hitler took it to its ultimate conclusion. Hoover ordered all workers out of the halls whenever he would walk from one office to another in the Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House. Hoover even felt threatened by the WW1 bonus brigade that was peacefully assembled in Washington DC (they called their shanty-town, "Hooverville") to petition their government for the bonuses promised them for volunteering for duty. Hoover ordered Douglas MacArthur to effectively beat the crap out of them and violently run them out of town.

Therefore, the idea of Hoover eating a meal prepared by a stranger sounds so, well, un-Hooverian.

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